Page 78 of Songbird
InRosie’sbedroomthatnight, under too-soft ivory satin bed sheets, I close my eyes in the darkness and try to imagine us in this exact position back at the cabin at Silver Leaf. The picture is gone before it has a chance to coalesce. It smells too different here, like scented candles and stale air instead of fog and the river and clean, damp earth. There are too many people and too much noise, even now that it’s after midnight because on the other side of the closed master suite door, a skeleton staff of people is available to make sure Rosie is safe and comfortable.
With sudden sharpness, I wish I could reach out and feel Dakota’s fur underneath my fingers, and how much I miss her is the last straw. I creep out of bed, leaving Rosie sleeping beside me, and go to the adjoining living space. Out in the main hallway, Tareq walks by on night duty, and following a quiet nod of acknowledgment, I close the door to the master suite.
I need the quiet and the privacy.
Rosie’s suite is more of a wing, a luxury setup with two bedrooms—the second one belongs to me to keep up appearances—and a living area with a soft sofa and wide-screentelevision. There’s a deep timber desk for a workspace and a dining nook with a long table and bench seat that looks out over a sparkling lap pool and neatly trimmed hedge fences. Flicking on one of the lamps dotted around the space, it takes a few minutes to locate Rosie’s old deck of cards atop a stack of papers on a side table. They belonged to her grandmother, she told me, and it’s not just the process of playing that comforts her, but the notion that by moving the cards about in her hands, Rosie is closer to the one person in life who always brought her solace.
I could use some of that solace myself, so I seat myself at the dining table and begin to shuffle. Without Rosie there to play, I get started on a game of solitaire.
Today was a fucking shit show and my nervous system still hasn’t returned to its baseline. The memory of paparazzi clumped around the car door when I opened it so Rosie could step out keeps flashing in my head, and I can’t shake the agitated sounds of fluttering camera lenses and screaming fans from my ears. It was loud and hot and uncontrollable, with too many bodies to get a read on the faces or pick a single threat out of the crowd. And on some level, it doesn’t matter that we got her safely in and out of her salon appointment, or that we lost the second guy tailing us through the streets, or that this is our new normal. I keep replaying the afternoon in my head and the ending comes out a little differently each time.
Sometimes it’s a cloaked hand that grabs her and drags her so far away that I can’t get to her before she’s gone. Other times it’s a blurry face that launches from the crowd and attacks before I can stop it. More times than I want it to be, Stanley Lowe gets the better of me, darting past my blind spot and sinking his knife into Rosie right in front of my eyes.
I should be stronger than this. I should be tougher, but this isn’t the first time my head has felt like a war zone. Sometimes I’m haunted by the friends I lost during active duty, and theones who were never the same after it. Other times it’s not being there for my dad and the ranch when my mom got sick, and then being on deployment when we lost him too. I remember Jack and wonder what signs I missed when they were right in front of my face. The ghosts are why I’m better off keeping busy, and although I’m not a stranger to restless nights, this is the first time I’ve been unable to sleep with Rosie in my bed.
Fifteen minutes with Rosie’s cards and I’m still no closer to calmness, so I set them aside and move to the sofa, collecting one of Rosie’s acoustic guitars on the way. I play as low as I can, no real method or melody in mind as my fingers move across the strings, but soon I’m toying with a tune that feels good enough to occupy my thoughts and settle my racing heart.
Half an hour later, still nowhere near sleepy, a gentle hand slips into my hair, and I close my eyes briefly at the sensation, leaning into the touch.
“Hey.” Rosie strokes my head gently. “What’s going on?”
“Can’t sleep,” I tell her.
She hums quietly, and I lean my head against her soft breasts, moving aside her open flannel to give me much-needed contact with her skin. She runs her fingers through my hair, and I take comfort in her touch and the quiet thrum of her heart.
“Do you want to talk about what happened today?”
“Not really,” I whisper. “Maybe. I don’t know.”
“I thought I was doing the brave thing,” she murmurs. “I should be able to get my hair done at my favorite salon or have lunch at a café without fearing for my life, shouldn’t I? Why can’t I experience the normality everyone else takes for granted? I didn’t want to let the paparazzi or the public win.”
I turn my face toward her body, kissing her sternum and letting her warmth soothe me. “In theory, Songbird, I agree with you, but in reality—”
“In reality, it’s not practical. I know that now.” She sighs. “I love creating and writing and playing for people, but I didn’t love feeling scared today.”
I swallow deeply and press my forehead against her chest. “Me neither.”
“I’ve been conditioned to believe this kind of exposure is part of my job,” she admits. “Nobody cared about Rosalie Thorne for a long time, and when they did, things escalated so fast I couldn’t keep up. I didn’t want fame to change me or take over my life, you know? I wanted to do the things I’ve always done and pretend the noise around me didn’t exist. But I can’t do that anymore. I need to figure out a new normal.”
I close my eyes and exhale with relief. “You don’t know how glad I am to hear you say that.”
“I talked to Pia tonight,” she says as she strokes the back of my neck. “I’m performing at a benefit concert in two weeks, and between now and then life will be a little tricky, but I’ve told her that’s my hard limit for her comeback campaign. If we haven’t reset the news cycle by the night of the concert, she’ll have to come up with another plan to rehabilitate my image. We can move to my house in Nashville, or we can build something bigger at Silver Leaf and travel back and forth between the two. Dakota will come with us, and we’ll stay out of the public eye. Keep our private life quiet. Maybe I’ll focus on writing for a while and take a break from performing. I’ll never be invisible, but we can disappear as best we can.”
Rosie drops her mouth to the top of my head. “I want to make a life with you, Finn. I’ll do anything to make that happen.”
My chest aches with how badly I want this version of a future with her and what a selfish asshole that makes me, but it’s not going to happen. I could never be so self-involved that I’d let Rosie make herself small to fit my idea of an easy life or change what she wants for herself because I’ve always wantedsomething else. I need to compromise at least as much, and probably more, than Rosie should ever have to. Whatever the future holds for us, our happily ever after exists somewhere in the middle.
“What are you playing?” she asks, nudging the guitar on my knees with her thigh.
“Nothing in particular,” I confess. “I just needed to feel the strings.”
“Can I help?”
To answer her, I lift the guitar over my head, and she ducks underneath the circle of my arms, settling herself on the sofa between my knees. I lower the guitar in front of her, and her fingers dance across the fret, brushing along the strings.
We play together, each of us extracting different chords and refrains to coax music from a single instrument. We’re in sync, talking with music instead of words, dipping in and out of each other’s melodies until all I want to hear is her. I lift my hands from the wood, set them on her shoulders, and gently push the fabric down her arms.
Her playing stumbles when I apply my mouth to her bare neck, her fingertips tripping over a note and then pausing when I let my tongue flicker across her skin.
